Xbox One: Only games will earn you Gamerscore

This is how the new Achievements system will work.

The only way to earn Gamerscore on Xbox One is via games, Cierra McDonald, program manager for Xbox Live Achievements has confirmed.

This is despite major changes to the way Achievements can be earned on the upcoming console.

"For Xbox One, my team and I have rebuilt the Achievements system to be more powerful and more flexible so that developers and publishers can deliver more interesting, complex, and fulfilling goals and rewards to you," explains McDonald.

"In addition to Gamerscore, which will remain as a critical part of the Xbox gaming experience (and yes, your Gamerscore from Xbox 360 will carry forward to Xbox One - there's only ONE Gamerscore), consumers can now unlock digital artwork, new maps, unlockable characters, and temporary stat boosts via achievements. And this is not limited to games!" writes McDonald. "Other Xbox One applications such as video and music apps can now use Achievements to bring you awesome sneak peek content, early access, or subscription extensions."

Importantly, McDonald says that "only games will give you Gamerscore".

There are going to be two types of Achievements: achievements and challenges.

"An achievement is probably already familiar," says McDonald. "There's a goal or activity you must accomplish and a reward that you receive upon completion. You can unlock an achievement at any time, be it on a game's launch day or 3 years later. I guess you can say an achievement is like a promise in that sense.

"A challenge, on the other hand, is more like an opportunity – better grab it while you can! It is also comprised of a goal and a reward; however, challenges are time-bound (as in, real life time). That means you can only unlock during its eligible time window, and if you get close but don't complete the goal when it ends… *Kanye shrug*"

Achievements and challenges share many of the same attributes:

You can unlock them and win their rewards;

Once unlocked, they are saved to your achievement history;

They each have an icon to visualize the cool thing you did;

They often are associated with a Game DVR capture to show your friends that you are better than they are

Developers can release more of them after the game's initial release (more on that in a bit).

Likewise, the two have notable differences:

Challenges are time based: Challenges are only available for a certain period of time. Only your activity during that timeframe will count toward unlocking the challenge. Achievements do not expire, so you can unlock them at your leisure.

Challenges do not give out Gamerscore: We want everyone to have the same shot at increasing their Gamerscore to its highest potential. Since challenges are intentionally temporary (an opportunity) and achievements never expire (a promise), only achievements may offer Gamerscore as a reward.

Challenges can be unlocked by the community: Community challenges are typically goals that exceed what a lone player can accomplish in the given period of time. Imagine, for example, a game releases a headshot weekend challenge that requires players to cumulatively headshot 1 million baddies in a 3 day period. And every person who participates and meets the challenge's goals gets the unlock on his or her achievement history and reaps its reward.

And here's a run-down on how the new Achievements system will be presented to Xbox One users:

The Xbox One dashboard experience greatly improves how you discover and view Xbox Live Achievements.

Ever wondered how far along you were toward completing an achievement, particularly those that involve a lot of collection or linear progress? With Xbox One, games may now expose your latest progression toward unlocking an achievement right on the dashboard, even before you launch the game.

Quickly catch up on what your friends have been up with the achievement activity feed that keeps you informed about your friends' latest unlocked achievements.

Check out video clips of that magical moment when an achievement was unlocked.

Easily discover upcoming challenges for a game at any time.

Your achievement history has been transformed into a more beautiful gallery of achievement icons that properly show off your hard-earned victories.

The new Achievement system is also cloud-powered, making it possible for developers to add new achievements and challenges after their game is initially released.

5 Comments

User Comments

Why wasn't this shown and displayed in ANY conference? This is a great feature for the console, because it encourages us to play games, rather than almost punishing us.

Challenges are the exact thing I wanted to get out of achievements. A completely arbitrary reward for playing the games on that system. Stuff like gamerpics or avatar items would be perfect, because each gamer has the opportunity to be unique based on what games that play and when they play them.

Microsoft's PR should have put this on the stage, because whilst it may be a small thing, at least it's something.

Achievements and the possibility of something decent coming out of kinect are the only things at the moment that's making me want an Xbox one as well as my love for the 360 but Im still swaying towards PS4, I do love the idea that achievement unlocks also record the moment it was unlocked as sometimes they are unlocked by an amazing fluke in comedy style which would be great to watch again, just a shame most achievements are just a completion of a level that's gonna make some pointless boring videos, could give developers a chance to be more inventive though.

I think there was room for a lot more trolling by Sony. They a big opportunity to troll them on the mandatory Kinect thing. Sony is releasing the PS Eye separately as an optional add-on at around £55 but Microsoft is forcing Kinect on us all.

Jack Tretton could've said something like this,

"Listen guys. We know that not everybody is quite convinced by the whole motion controls thing at this point, but we strongly believe that we can win you over with real quality and value rather than brute force.

We can't say that every PS3 owner bought into Playstation Move - they didn't. This is one of the core principles of our business: we give you the value proposition and then we give you the choice to decide whether you want it personally. We know that Playstation Move might not be for everybody, but we're committed to showing you the true potential and hoping that you will exercise your consumer choice to buy our products.

We don't feel the need to force the Playstation Move or Playstation Eye on you because we are confident that we can deliver quality gameplay innovations that will live up to your expectations, and make you want to actively go out and buy into our Move and Eye accessories."

If he had said that, nobody would have anything to complain about. They just have to talk to us like people. Like human beings. I'm not a demographic statistic. I'm an individual consumer.

Probably because if they started answering all these easy questions early, it would look even more foul when they refused to go into detail about the always online/drm/pre-owned game/kinect/price issues.

The way they see it, the consoles go on sale in 5 months so they have time to sway gamer opinion. They probably weren't prepared for the Sony trolling either lol

Why couldn't they just have explained this all fully before? instead we have all the hate-jumpers leaping at the chance to yet again decry something as negative when in fact it could have been a positive if all the information was available to begin with.